A Triggering Of The Imagination
October 2004
Imagine!
That word usually sends me off into the netherworld of fairy dust
and the wee people. Not tonight. Tonight my imagination has been
triggered through a televised preview announcing "4400,"
an upcoming program about the return of 4,400 people who disappeared
60 years ago and returned all at once ... not having aged a day.
They left; they returned, in this science fiction world of story-telling.
The
premise was all I needed to trigger my own thoughts of "what
if." I deliberately skipped watching the program and went
back in time to, say, my birthday ... 60 years ago. I was twelve,
going on 13, a magical time, won't you agree? I was studying for
the Regents' Exam, a required test for Parochial School students
entering high school in New York City. Did I take it that morning,
did I pass it? Was that the day? Was that when my existence stopped
only to resume today?
You ask where
I was when I went missing. "Went missing? Went missing?
I didn't 'go missing,' I disappeared and I don't know where I
was. I was there and now I'm here."
We were at
war that one day ago but there are sixty years between today and
yesterday. Did we win? Did my five brothers come home? Imagine
not knowing the end of the stories, the telltale fabric of our
lives? Mama? Papa? What happened to them? How did they live in
the days after my last birthday? How did they die?
This is a
formidable task, this searching through my memory for things I
can legitimately remember as having happened before my birthday.
I'm scanning back and forth, discarding this memory, holding tightly
to another, all to bring me to me, to whom I am.
Nothing. I
am absolutely nothing without the 60 years between then and now.
From the first day of my life to the last one I remember clearly,
nothing happened that would shape my character, form my personality,
create my conscience. From morning until night, I was either in
school – learning how to learn - or at play, where teamwork
and fairness were the building blocks. Beyond that? What?
If I had died
the day I disappeared the unfulfilled promise of my life would
be written as "Here lies Connie, She had potential."
But, I didn't die; I just was "absent" from my life
for the next six decades while life went on without me.
Did I go to
my first dance? I don't know, I wasn't there. Was there even a
dance?
It's one thing
to forget a life you've lived and have no memory of the family
you grew from and the family you helped create. But, it's another
thing to find you were frozen in time while life went on around
you. Can I even conjure up a life worth living without including
those whose lives were parallel mine during my days from then
until now?
Nobel Laureate
Seamus Heaney coined the phrase "the music of what happens,"
and I'll dance to that. But, as I look over the supposedly missing
sixty years, it has to be happening right now, today, this moment
- or, I won't dance, don't ask me, if I may borrow that line.
Heaney also
wrote of what is common to all humanity. He spoke of its "not
being the economic givens of your background but the state of
readiness of your own spirit. In fact," he said, "the
ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the
gift of keeping going upon your own terms...." The terms
as once inscribed in my personal book of life did not contain
the codicil facing my imagination now.
In that far
ago time of my life, twelve-going-on-thirteen, there was an innocence,
an unacquaintedness with any of "the music that happens"
as it would have unfolded in the six decades excised from my time
here. I would have arrived at this moment still innocent, not
bearing the weight of history - nor any emotional baggage, as
we call it today.
At 12, I knew
what hope was, I knew what faith was; but, I didn't have an inkling
of what tragedy was. Nor did I know that the scant knowledge of
hope and faith were enough to carry me through tragedy.
Still imagining,
if I stop at the door to the 60 years I'll never know, then I
won't have to suffer the pain of losing so many I've loved. Ah,
but I wouldn't have the joy of knowing and loving them, either.
That's no trade off. The analogies would be wanting roses without
thorns, preparing an omelet without breaking eggs.
There is a
plan, you know. While looking over the events of my life looking
for whatever I could find in those pre-teen years, I stopped at
crossroads that came later. Yes, I did take a different road now
and then in the sixty years I did live but it was in a direction
necessary to get me here. And here is where I want to be, doing
what I want to do, remembering who I was then and knowing I am
where the blueprints placed me.
In our Declaration
of Independence, we learned we are endowed by our
Creator with certain inalienable Rights, "that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I believe
it goes without saying that any thought of 60 years being taken
away from us is pure fantasy. And, we learned in Ecclesiastics,
Chapter 3, "For every thing there is a season, and a time
for every purpose under Heaven: A time to be born, and a time
to die..."
It
is a plan, and it works for me. Any other notion is a fairy tale.
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